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Much extra work should be performed to fulfill Puerto Rico’s crucial humanitarian wants after Hurricane Maria, the US territory’s prime official stated Saturday, whereas additionally emphasizing that the federal authorities is fulfilling his each request — placing a conciliatory tone minutes after President Donald Trump lambasted a mayor who criticized Washington’s response.

“We need to do a lot more in order for us to get out of the emergency,” Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló stated in San Juan. “But the other thing that’s also true is that the administration has answered and has complied with our petitions in an expedited manner.”

Eleven days after Hurricane Maria started to pound Puerto Rico as a Category four storm, tens of millions in the US commonwealth stay with out common electrical energy service, and plenty of have restricted entry to fuel, money and working water. At least 16 individuals died there as a results of the storm, the federal government has stated.

Earlier Saturday, Trump — who plans to go to the island Tuesday — used Twitter to criticize San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and the “leadership ability” of some in Puerto Rico who “want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.” Cruz earlier had criticized the distribution of assist and stated the feds wanted to do extra.

“I don’t feel that (Trump’s) message was sent in general,” Rosselló stated. “I am committed to collaborating with everybody. This is a point where we can’t look at small differences. We can’t establish differences based on politics.”

Rosselló acknowledged lots of the island’s three.four million residents may depart for good, and extra individuals may die, if situations don’t enhance quickly.

With a lot of the energy transmission grid destroyed, greater than 95% of shoppers are with out common electrical energy service. Only 10.7% of the island’s cellular phone towers are working. People are ready for hours in line at fuel stations and thinly equipped grocery shops. Some communities are remoted by telephone outages and blocked and broken roads.

German Rodriguez appears via a window from inside his destroyed home after Hurricane Maria, in Aibonito, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 29, 2017.(Credit: Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty Images)

“My invitation … is to recognize what the important issue is: helping the people of Puerto Rico. Everything else is fodder to the side,” he stated.

Rain is aggravating the scenario and on Saturday night time, authorities started to evacuate a number of hundred residents who reside very near a pressured dam in northwestern Puerto Rico.

Trump: Some leaders ‘want everything to be done for them’

Trump’s Twitter assault on Cruz got here a day after she stepped up criticism of the federal response, saying assist wasn’t being distributed effectively.

Wearing a black shirt that learn, “Help Us, We Are Dying,” she appeared Friday night time on CNN to say the scenario was determined.

“People are drinking out of creeks here in San Juan,” she instructed CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “You have people in buildings, and they’re becoming caged in their own buildings — old people, retired people that don’t have any electricity.”

“We’re dying here. We truly are dying here. I keep saying it: SOS. If anyone can hear us; Mr. Trump can hear us, let’s just get it over with and get the ball rolling,” she stated.

Saturday morning, Trump responded.

“The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” the President tweeted.

“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job,” his tweets learn.

Cruz instructed Cooper on Saturday night time that she isn’t a Democrat, although she shares a few of their values.

“I have no time for small politics or for comments that don’t really add to the situation here,” she stated.

Puerto Rican National Guardsmen load a helicopter with meals and water to deliver to hurricane survivors in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Sept. 29, 2017.(Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Brock Long, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, instructed CNN on Saturday that restoration efforts hinge on good communication and coordinated efforts.

“The bottom line is we’ve had a joint field office established for numerous days in San Juan and what we need is for the good mayor to make her way to the joint field office and get plugged into what’s going on,” he stated when requested concerning the President’s tweets about Cruz.

Long stated he was targeted on getting assist despatched to 11 FEMA distribution facilities all through the commonwealth and getting extra arrange.

Long stated he can be in Puerto Rico for a number of days early subsequent week.

Cruz instructed Cooper on Saturday that she works out of a constructing that has two FEMA envoys and she or he feels as if there’s adequate cooperation.

Cruz and her household are staying on the Coliseum in San Juan, together with greater than 600 individuals. They’re sleeping in cots and consuming the identical meals as everybody else after their home flooded.

Struggling for fundamentals

For many in Puerto Rico, attempting to get the fundamentals, like gasoline, has develop into a grueling, all-day affair.

More than 710 of the island’s roughly 1,110 fuel stations have been working as of Saturday morning, in line with the Puerto Rican authorities’s web site for data on the restoration.

But stations typically are closing in the night, forward of a government-mandated 9 p.m. curfew designed to restrict looting. And traces in the day are lengthy.

In Loíza, residents waited for greater than 10 hours Friday for fuel. The city’s deputy mayor, Luis Escobar, summed it up as a damaged chain. “No fuel, no work, no money.”

Without fuel or transport, individuals can’t get to their jobs. Without work, there isn’t any cash to purchase requirements.

After spending an complete day ready for gasoline, the subsequent days are spent attempting to get meals and different fundamental provides, residents say.

Hurricane survivors obtain meals and water being given out by volunteers and police on Sept. 28, 2017, in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. (Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

There’s additionally a money shortage. Many of Puerto Rico’s companies, supermarkets and fuel stations will settle for solely money as a result of bank card programs are down.

At least half of all financial institution branches stay shuttered, in half as a result of they will’t get sufficient armored vehicles with fuel, or truck drivers, to ship money safely. Some financial institution branches are limiting the quantity of day by day withdrawals.

All telephone landlines working; cell service largely down

Recovery efforts this weekend could also be hampered by rain.

Puerto Rico is underneath a flash flood watch till late Sunday, as between 2 and four inches of rain may fall, the National Weather Service stated. Low-lying areas are in danger for flooding as drainage pumps aren’t performing at full capability.

“(The rain will be) a problem — a lot of the rivers and streams in Puerto Rico have yet to recede to normal levels,” CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar stated Saturday.

Rosselló and FEMA officers gave the next updates on restoration efforts Saturday:

• All telephone landlines are actually working.

• The authorities nonetheless is in the method of shopping for a few thousand crates of private-sector items — reminiscent of meals meant for grocery shops — which have been sitting idle on the Port of San Juan. Companies that may’t entry the port and ship the products can be compelled to promote the gadgets to the commonwealth, which is able to distribute them, Rosselló stated.

• About 10,000 individuals are in roughly 230 shelters.

• About half of the island’s clients have common water service.

• Millions of meals and liters of water are being despatched from ports to 11 distribution factors all through the island, the place native governments can decide them up for distribution. In some circumstances, FEMA or different businesses are delivering by helicopter to remoted communities.

• Fifty-one of the island’s 69 hospitals are open. Nine of the open hospitals have common electrical energy service; the remaining are powered by mills.

Homes and streets nonetheless flooded

About 45 miles from San Juan, in the city of Florida, fish swim in the streets which can be nonetheless flooded after the hurricane.

Though the city is nowhere close to the coast, the storm backed up a close by creek, inflicting the flooding and forcing households from their properties.

eight numbers that present how Maria has laid waste to Puerto Rico

Despite the overall collapse of utilities, residents are cleansing up and clearing particles from roads.

Officials from FEMA arrived in city Friday, and residents peppered them with questions: When will provides come? How lengthy will it take?

“FEMA’s not going to forget about this community,” the company’s Caroline Cuddy instructed CNN’s Ivan Watson. “FEMA’s not going to forget about the needs that they have, and we’re going to work with our people back in our field office in San Juan about what we’re going to do.”